Joseph “Joe” David Liebgott
The Real Joseph Liebgott:
Joseph David Liebgott was born in Lansing, Michigan in May 17, 1915 to Joseph (Josef) Liebgott Sr and Mary. Joseph Liebgott Sr was of German descent, but he was born in Beresztocz, Hungary. Joe’s mother was Yugoslavian, but was reported as born in either Yugoslavia or Hungary I am not sure which one because records show both. On his father’s side his grandparents were Yugoslavian as well. On his mother’s sider, they seem to be from Hungary. His mother immigrated in 1909, Lieb’s father immigrated in 1912.
Below is a picture believed to be his parents.
He was the oldest of his siblings. He has four sisters: Mary, Elizabeth, Anna, and Barbara, and one brother, Stephen/Steffen . Both of his parents spoke German, which would later help him during the war. His father worked in the auto industry before they moved.
His family soon moved to California around 1927 and his dad became a barber. He was the oldest of his siblings, one brother and four sisters. He was extremely protective of his younger sisters
Liebgott and his siblings attended Catholic schools. This is where learned how to box and played soccer.
After high school, Liebgott drove a taxi around San Francisco. This career was temporary and he soon attended barber college.
He was also previously married before the war. He was married in July 31, 1933 to a woman named Frances. They had one child, David Albert together on February 27, 1934. But the couple soon divorced within a year, and he was living with his family again by 1940, where he was working on a forestry project. Meanwhile his ex-wife and son moved into her family. Here is Joe and Frances:
He eventually became a barber and this was his career when he enlisted at the age of 26. Liebgott chose the paratroopers to be able to make more money to be able to put a down payment on his parents’ house.
Included is a photo of Joe and his mother
He has a Jewish service card, registered under his mother’s name. But his family denied he was Jewish, stating he was a German Roman Catholic. I’ll attach it below (filtered for safety).
In his draft card he is listed as 5 feet and 5 inches tall and was 109 pounds. He had blue-grey eyes and brown hair.
Malarkey remembers meeting Liebgott on his way to Toccoa where they became part of the original Toccoa men. Liebgott was trained under the harsh command of Herbert Sobel.
Liebgott didn’t talk much about the war, so there will be little but other’s words to put here. This is a photo from 1945 in France.
Right before the jump out of the airplane, he put his barber skills to use and gave a few of the men Mohawks.
He would jump out of the airplanes with the rest of the men on June 6, 1944. He received the bronze star for his bravery at Brecourt Manor, where he worked with Winters and several other men, Compton, Guarenere, Wynn, Lipton, Toye, Malarkey, and Ranney to destroy a German Battery firing on Utah Beach on the day of the D-Day Invasion.
He cut off the finger of a German that he had bayoneted and took the man’s ring near Carentan. At Carentan, Ed Tipper was seriously wounded after clearing out a house with Liebgott. Liebgott grabbed Tipper, yelled for a medic, and told Tipper that he’d be okay. Welsh and Lieb dragged Tipper into the street until Welsh could get him back to the aid station.
After Brecourt, Compton recalls a painful memory with Liebgott in his book, Call of Duty, Compton and Liebgott were patrolling along hedges at dusk. Across the way, in another set of hedges were two men. Both were dressed in German ponchos, one was holding a German gun. Assuming that these men were in fact German, he and Liebgott shot the men. Come to find out, when they checked their dog tags, they were not Germans. They were Americans. They had just killed fellow soldiers in friendly fire.
October 5, 1944. Winters sent a few Youmen out on patrol to take an outpost near a windmill. Liebgott and a few other men (James Alley among them) went with Sgt. Youmen. They sent one man ahead, to look out over the dike. The man spotted German machine guns. German voices approached the remaining boys. Lieb called out for the Youman, as we was trailing behind, only to have grenades thrown at him and the other men. Liebgott got minor wounds while James Alley received 32 shrapnel wounds in his left side, stretching from his face down. They’d run into a company of SS.
Liebgott was known for being rough with prisoners, the fighting that followed the injuries wit the SS company was a prime example of this. After Winters led his patrol to attack these Germans, in which during the fighting they lost William Dukeman, 7 Germans surrendered. The most famous story of Liebgott is as follows, in Dick Winter’s words.
As Winters explains in his book, “Tech/5 Joseph D. Liebgott had been slightly wounded in the arm, but he was ambulatory so I assigned him the mission of escorting seven German prisoners to the rear. Liebgott had earned the reputation of being one of Easy’s best combat soldiers, but we had all heard stories that he was very rough on prisoners. Liebgott was one of Easy Company’s “killers,” so I deemed it appropriate to take a bit of caution. When he heard me say, “Take the prisoners back to the battalion command post,” he replied. “Oh, boy! I’ll take care of them.” In his exuberance, Liebgott stood up and paced back and forth and he was obviously very nervous and concerned. I stopped him in his tracks. “There are seven prisoners and I want seven prisoners turned over to battalion.” Liebgott was highly incensed and started to throw a tantrum.Somewhat unsure of how he would react, I then dropped my M-1 to my hip, threw off my safety, and said, Liebgott, drop all your ammunition and empty your rifle.” There was much grumbling and swearing, but he did as I had ordered. “Now,” I said, “you can put one round in your rifle. If you drop a prisoner, the rest will jump you.””
Liebgott got all 7 prisoners back.
Joe would recover in a hospital in England with Webster, but he was back before Bastogne. Here is the record for that:
Name:Joseph D Liebgott Race:White, includes Mexican (White) Rank:Enlisted Man Admission Age:29 Birth Date:abt 1915 Admission Date:Oct 1944 Discharge Date:Nov 1944 Military Branch:Infantry, Parachute Troops or Units Diagnosis:FirstLocation: Ulna, generally; CausativeAgent: Artillery Shell, Fragments, Afoot or unspecified Type of Injury:Casualty, battle Injured in Line of Duty:In line of duty Type of Discharge:Duty Length of service:2 Year(s), 6 Month(s)
In Bastogne, Winters made him a runner to get away from the tension and constant stress of fighting. One story of his service was outside of Foy is the battle of Noville, he and Earl Hale ducked into a barn and took 6 SS officers prisoner. Outside the barn, a shell exploded. One of the SS officers took this as an opportunity and jumped Hale. He slit Hale’s throat. Liebgott instantly shot and killed the officer. He then killed the others. Hale survived miracuously.
At some point, before the end of the war, Liebgott became first platoon’s interpreter-radioman. This was because he could speak some German. But Webster claimed in his book that the German’s didn’t understand his Yiddish.
He was with Webster when they took Hitler’s Nest. They spent their time drinking Hitler’s alcohol together with a few other men. He was living with Headquarters Company while there.
Of course, the war came to an end and everyone who wanted to was discharged.
Over the course of the war, Lieb was injured 3 times and won 3 purple hearts. He refused one because the wound was “just a scratch”. He would receive partial disability for his wounds.
When he returned home, he disappeared for two years. Eventually he was found living in Yuma, California. He didn’t come to reunions, even when offered multiple times. His father simply told the vets “not to mess with him”.
After the war, Liebgott was a barber for a short time. He married again to a woman named Peggy in 1949. They had eight kids together. Making Lieb’s total children come to nine, although he was mostly involved with the last eight. They lived on a barber’s salary, not leaving much room for fun activities but everyone had their basic needs met. He often only had one day a week off and would take his kids to a Long Beach pike, where they would visit an amusement park.
Liebgott liked to bet on the ponies at the racetrack. Every other sunday, him and his boss would take the boss’ airplane down to Mexico.
He is believed to have never contacted anyone from his days in Easy Company. He just wanted to get away from the war.
The Liebgotts divorced in April of 1969. She remarried, but he never did. He was described as really quiet by his granddaughter.
She states, in Marcus Brotherton’s book Company of Heroes (pages 120-121) “His hands looked like a man who worked with his hands, sunspots all over. He absolutely loved his grandkids. he had false teeth that he flipped out of his mouth and smiled, threatening to kiss us with his gums. He was a tickler. He never held babies over his shoulder…because he wanted them to see everything….He didn’t have a lot of money - I’m pretty sure all he had was his veteran’s benefits…He made all of the bikes for the grandkids by scouring thrift stores for dilapidated bikes. He stripped the bikes down to their frame, fixed and assembled them as good as new. He let each grandchild pick the color of new paint for his or her bike….I always knew the specific foods we were going to eat at his house. He had bite-sized candy bars and store brand soda-pop. There was no drinking water in his house. He always lived in rental houses…”
He was very neat, and keep his house and appearance orderly. However, he was always working in the garage, so the house had black smudges from the dirt on his hands.
However, Liebgott was not perfect. While he hated the Nazis, he was also seen as a bigot, maybe even harsher. Rhonda explained that he threw the n word around like it wasn’t a big deal. He blamed the wrong goings of the world on different ethnic groups. Rhonda started seeing a guy from El Salvador, he asked if her partner “even spoke English?”
As he grew older, Lieb got sicker. He eventually lost the use of one of his legs from a hernia. He was confined to a chair and hated any new technology. He was stuck in a wheelchair, angry when he would hit a cabinet.
Lieb did not talk about his military career until towards his end. He would spend time with his son Jim, watching tv talking about the war during a war movie. He would talk about the war when he was mad, possibly angry at himself for doing a lot of killing and other things that people his age shouldn’t have to do.
In 1992, Liebgott developed a tumor in his neck, near his windpipe that would cause a lot of pain. Jim took him to the hospital on Father’s Day. Shortly later, on June 28, 1992 Liebgott died. He was against a funeral and just wanted to be cremated, so his family did as he wished. They still have his ashes and letters and the Toccoa book.
